


The five times James was too shy

by Ygern



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon compliant up to the end of Season 7, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-25 04:58:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16654678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ygern/pseuds/Ygern
Summary: The five times James was too shy to kiss Robbie when he showed him how to do something to do with technology, and the one time he suddenly found his courage.





	1. In the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This for everybody on the Endeavour / Morse discord involved in the chat the other day about writing a 5+1 story. You know who you are.

You're not the easiest person I ever got to know  
And it's hard for us both to let our feelings show  
Some would say I should let you go your way  
You'll only make me cry  
If there's one guy, just one guy  
Who'd lay down his life for you and die  
It's hard to say it  
I hate to say it, but it's probably me

Sting - It's Probably Me

Let me tell you a story. 

The day I met Detective Inspector Robert Lewis, I was not in the best of forms. CS Innocent had sent me off to play cabbie, which wasn’t, I didn’t think, the best use of a fast-track DS’s skills. Of course, I wasn’t going to argue with her about that. I did try to make it clear to the newly-arrived DI that I wasn’t best pleased with my new assignment, but he seemed to have perfected the art of ignoring what he didn’t want to hear; a skill I later surmised he had learned from the infamous Chief Inspector Morse, a man whose talents and foibles were still the stuff of legend in Thames Valley Police CID. I discovered to my dismay that he’d been assigned to me, or rather, I’d been assigned to him within an hour of his arrival thanks to my then-DI, Knox, who’d managed to get himself booked for drink-driving before 10am, damn fool that he was.

So there I was, trailing behind an irritable Geordie with an out-of-place golden-brown Caribbean tan, the bluest eyes I’d ever seen and just barely the right amount of authority and respect for the chain of command to avoid being done up on insubordination charges on his first day back. I was fairly sure he disapproved of me too when I caught him scowling at my emailing Innocent on my Blackberry. But on Day Two the most unexpected thing happened: he asked for my opinion. As I’d intimated, I did a bit of rowing at Cambridge. Okay, quite a lot of rowing, but one doesn’t boast of past glories at all if one can help it in the British Constabulary. Trust me on that. Anyway, Lewis asked me for my opinion. I nearly stumbled over my own clown feet, but managed to rally and point out the inconsistencies at the scene drawing on my considerable experience in the area of competitive rowing. When he called me out on “used to row a bit,” I couldn’t help the treacherous smile that overtook my stupid face and it took me several minutes to force my features back to a professional demeanour. 

Then he went and took the blame for a stupid slip-up I’d made. Nothing major, just an administrative hiccup, but one that was sufficient to incur the wrath of Chief Superintendent Innocent. I was nothing to Lewis, yet he shouldered the blame and diverted her attention to him, before brushing it off as nothing. No-one had ever done that before for me, not at school, not at seminary, not ever. From that moment I was helpless, I started falling.

When I asked Innocent to give him first refusal on being my governor, I could barely control my eagerness and I am sure that a glimmer of a smile made it through the mask of cool friendliness and willingness to be useful that I was trying to project. God help me, I had already fallen for him so hard with his gentle beautiful accent and steel-clad determination. My heart had already broken for him at the grave of his wife, and my pulse beat like a teenager on drugs every time he sat down (too close) to me. No, never too close to me. I could always smell him when he sat next to me. He was soap-and-water at the start of the day, sweet-smelling sweat in the evenings, freshly ironed shirts in the mornings, and coffee-breathed mid-morning when we tended to take our breaks. I instantly learned to be drugged by those scents, headier to me than any perfume. Like I said, I have a stupid face. I have an even stupider brain. But I do know that you don’t fall in love with your boss. You especially don’t fall in love with a man who is:

one) straight and completely heterosexual  
two) still in love with his dead wife  
three) in mourning  
four) did I mention he is my boss?  
five) so much older and more sophisticated than I.

He could have any woman he wanted, and God knows, over the years I’ve seen plenty of women set their cap at him. Some of them actually caught his attention too – being as he is, a red-blooded male who is hardly immune to the allure of the fairer sex – the most important of course being the resident pathologist, Doctor Laura Hobson, a woman of high intelligence, impeccable taste, unimpeachable integrity and the noblest of hearts. He liked her too and I could only commend him for his choice. But still my foolish, idiot heart now beat only for him and I knew I would be happy to resign myself to a lifetime in the mere presence of the man I could never have. I would revel in his sarcastic grins and wry comments, and thrill in every appreciative glance and nod I ever received from the man. 

I’m not proud of it. I know it’s somewhat pathetic. But for the first time in my life I woke up in the morning desperate to get to work on time because he would be there; and I knew it would be interesting and fun, because he would be there. I partly hated myself because I knew these were my best days ever in all my life. How could I have let myself fall so fast and love him and love him and love him?

I did everything not to show it. I smiled, nodded crisply, listened intently but tried to pretend to only an appropriate attention to duty. Made a smart observation. Carefully noted everything he had to say on anything. I anticipated everything he would want that I could think of. I followed up on everything he mentioned, even as a casual aside and then shrugged aside with modesty any surprise he might show in my over-enthusiastic diligence. I affected a calm confidence I did not feel when he brought me down to the pub over the bridge by the green riverbank at the successful end of the case: 

“Thanks, sir. Mine’s a pint.”

He put me in my place straight away, and God help me, I loved it.

“Mine’s a pint, sergeant; you’re driving.”

When my orange juice arrived he took out the new smartphone he’d been assigned and fiddled with it and then huffed and beckoned me over. I sank down next to him breathing in the salty-sweet scent of him that I already thought was the most intoxicating thing in the universe, and bent my head over his phone showing him the most useful menus and how to add his daughter and me to his hotkey contacts. He was so close his leg was pressed up against mine and his warmth crept over me like a cover. I could have stayed like that forever, basking in his body heat. So close that I could have touched his face – put my hand to his jaw and gently touched my lips to his. 

But of course I did no such thing. I’m a coward. I’m also not a complete idiot. (Well, maybe I am, jury’s still out on that one.) Instead, I showed him how to make a photograph of him with his wife and kids the wallpaper of his phone and then retreated to my side of the table.

God help me. I was in love with him and utterly without any hope of his ever returning those feelings; and I’d never been happier in my entire life.


	2. Sensory processing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You   
> And me   
> Always  
> And forever
> 
> "You and Me Song" ~  
> The Wannadies

It’s true that the unadulterated happiness you feel when you first realise you are in love only lasts for so long. Real life has a habit of getting in the way, of curbing your fantasies. But real life brought me Robert Lewis every day, and together we worked long hours and puzzled out curious motives of the Oxford criminal mind. Every day there were little anecdotes and quips and rolled eyeballs and hidden grins. Well, hidden from our CS, anyway.

“I always cry when I know I’m going to spend the day with you, sir.”

The only thing that kept me from leaping out of bed first thing when my alarm clock rang in the morning, was the apparent reignition of all my teenage hormones. I would awake half-hard and it would take only an instant’s thought of his eyes and my hand would be slipping inside my boxers and I was thrusting and gasping and then shuddering as I came all over my fist. On weekends I would let myself take it slow in the shower, trying to see how long I could last before my fantasies of him standing behind me, stroking my hair, touching me would have me spilling all over my hands again. I promised myself I was allowed to love him so long as he never found out. Lewis could never know, not ever. Sometimes I could feel a blush rising in my face when he looked at me, so I developed a little habit of looking away, muttering something clever or disarming with a little frown on my face to deflect attention from the blood in my cheeks. When I couldn’t turn away I would drive the nails of my hand into my palms so as to narrow my focus to the point of pain and drive my bout of bashfulness underground again, so to speak. 

It worked, more-or-less, and it certainly stood me in good stead when we were called up in front of Innocent, an occurrence that was becoming more and more frequent these days. I don’t know if she was more curious about Lewis’s mentoring methods, or concerned about me and the detecting habits I was picking up. Either way, she was always hijacking us these days and I was learning not to show any response to Lewis’s expressions of annoyance or frustration at her questions.

I almost slipped up by the end of the case we were on; a horrible murder by a charming man, who’d hung the body of his wife from the banisters, and then calmly led his neighbour inside to discover their tragedy. It was when he’d tried to murder her children and hurt Lewis that I nearly snapped in rage and dangled him over a window ledge until he begged to live. That nearly ended my career. Innocent was incandescent with disbelief and anger at my unprofessional behaviour. Then Lewis did three things that probably changed the course of my life.

One) Robbie started guffawing at my clumsy attempts to appease Innocent.  
Two) Lewis laid his career on the line for me, to protect me.  
Three) He completely defused Innocent’s outrage by refusing to take any more of the dressing-down session seriously.

How he managed to get away without insubordination charges is beyond me, but Lewis is talented like that. I wanted to kiss him. Actually, I wanted to do much more than kiss him, but instead I settled for thanking him profusely and sincerely down the pub and writing his stupid speech for him.

He didn’t let me get as drunk as I’d originally envisioned, and put me in a cab to get me home safely; and as a result I spent the rest of my waking hours that night at home with a bottle of lube and I came so hard that I passed out afterwards, with silicone-based goo all over my stomach and legs.

He’d saved me, and in case I hadn’t wanted to do everything for him before already; my thoughts were now refocused on being the helpmeet that he needed. That’s why I was so pleased when he enlisted my help to set up an Amazon account for him so that he could buy his daughter Lyn a birthday present.

It’s not true what they say, that a smoker loses his sense of smell. How a non-smoker would imagine that they know what a smoker can smell has always puzzled me a little. But anyway, I had no trouble smelling the soap-and-water and whiskey of Robbie Lewis as we sat together on his couch bent over his battered old laptop considering choices of music CDs and bottles of perfume. He was pleased with his purchases for Lyn and we drank the contents of an entire bottle of Jameson in celebration while I breathed in his scent and tried not to be obvious about it. I allowed myself one sideways glance at his mouth, and for three seconds imagined how little it would take to stretch out my hand and touch him and claim that mouth with mine.

At the end of the evening he tossed me a pillow and a duvet and told me to sleep where I was. I lay contentedly in the warmth his body imprint left on the couch when he headed off to his bedroom. 

My clothes smelled of him when I got home the next morning. I left them in my bed for a week before putting them in the laundry.


	3. The sum of your hopes, your despairs and your fears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whatever you promise  
> Whatever you’ve done and  
> Whatever the station in life you’ve become  
> In the name of the Father,  
> In the name of the Son, and  
> Whatever the weave of this life that you’ve spun  
> On the earth and in heaven or under the sun  
> When the last ship sails. 
> 
>  
> 
> (Sting ~ The last ship)

My life was perfect. Almost perfect.

Well, okay, better than I’d ever hoped for. 

When I crashed out of the seminary and joined the police force, I wasn’t particularly pleased with myself. I’d had a crisis of conscience and I no longer was sure what I believed in, only that I had deeply hurt a friend I had once cared about and that the God of Mercy I believed in could never have wanted this.

My woefully low batting average in the romance department was less to do with my once wanting to be a priest and more to do with the fact that I only really want to make love to someone that I am in love with. Scarlett was my first. Well, she was my first love. I was eight at the time. Not my first act of sexual intercourse, you understand, for obvious reasons, but more about that at another time.

But I had married Scarlett as a child, both of us decked in garlands of wild-flowers and crowns of daisies; with Paul, aka the Sundance Kid, giving the blessing and the Danver sisters witnessing the solemn promises. Depending on how you interpret Church law, we either were or weren’t married in the eyes of God based on intention alone.

Twenty years later (give or take) and there I was, a man with a degree that was highly specialised and almost entirely useless in my current job, Oxbridge pedigree notwithstanding; at an age where I was teetering on the brink of being no longer an entirely attractive prospect to either employers or Colleges of any persuasion; subordinate to a man whose education fell far short of mine and yet my life was perfect; my happiness, close to complete.

It was true that I went home alone every evening. Robert (I called him that in my head sometimes, as a mark of half-familiarity, half-respect) did not come home with me. He did not hold me in his arms as I cooked him supper and he did not tell me that he loved me. He never touched me. He never kissed me. But it was perfect. 

He brought me as his plus one to Laura Hobsons’s birthday party, he found me in the garden and plotted a getaway with me when it all got too medical for us; and I found myself leaning against a _bona fide_ Shelley expert’s doorway, giggling at Lewis’s quips about barking dogs and trying to out-snark him with smart-arse comments about Romantic Poets and the rest of the guys in the band. 

Fuck, I wanted him so badly in that moment. I couldn’t have him, of course. Not with uniform standing impatiently in the wings and a bad-tempered academic already plotting our downfall in front of us. Not with him there, so pure and righteous and honourable. 

_(Facetious. All that, and dishy too.)_

I couldn’t stop myself from whispering in his ear at the scene-of-crime.

“You know what we’ve got here, sir? A body in the library.”

“Now that, sergeant, is definitely facetious.”

He was perfect. Oh God, I loved him. Who else would understand me? But he just quirked a grin at me and rolled his eyes and allowed me to don the mask of the professional copper and carry out my duties. It was round about this time that I refined my blank face.

_"The point of a partnership such as yours is that the junior officer matures to the level of the senior, rather than that the senior officer should regress."_

I had to bite my lip so hard to stop myself from laughing at Innocent that my mouth was swollen for the rest of the day. Robert definitely noticed, I caught him eyeing me several times and laughing along with me.

As always the guilty parties proved to be cruel and callous in their destruction of innocent life. They destroyed an innocent girl who only wanted to create artistic concepts; and they damn near destroyed an innocent boy whose only fault had been to admire the girl who could create concepts.

If there were any Justice, the miscreants would burn in hell forever. Alas, I suspect there is only us, coppers trying to right the wrongs. All we can do is arrest the bad guys and hope that The Crown Prosecution Service does its part.

All I could do is try to execute what Robert needed me to do and be as debonair and self-possessed as a man who knows the person he loves is watching could be.

_I'm not a joiner of things. I wanted you to know how grateful I am. I don't have dates. Sometimes I worry about your taste in women. I always cry._

 

After I’d cracked poor Nell’s secret subdirectory with Philip Horton’s password and Dr Walter’s cunningly concealed USB stick, Robert invited me back to his place for a drink with a pat on the shoulder and a nod of approval. After two pints of Morrells and a snifter of whiskey he was in confessional mode and admitted that once upon a time in the olden days of DOS, Morse had considered him to be something of a computer whiz. 

“Of course, it’s all moved on too fast for me,” Lewis said sighing and leaning his head against the back of the couch we were on. “I don’t understand half of it any more.”

“That’s alright, sir, I’m happy to fill in any gaps and correct any errors that may occur,” I said.

The honest truth: I probably don’t really know that much more than him. DOS required a fairly technical mind, and a man who had mastered that, probably would have found anything I knew fairly trivial to pick up.

Nevertheless, Robbie’s laptop made an appearance and he said, “So show us how to do Facebook, would ya? Only our Lyn wants to be able to show me photos of me grandson.”

“Facebook? Very 21st century of you, sir! Are you sure you’re ready for the heady exoticisms of Poking and Liking?”  
He gave me a look that suggested that I was minutes away from being sent to the coal mines. I tried to suggest that I would spend a lifetime in the mines in exchange for one kiss, but apparently my smouldering glance didn’t translate as accurately as I’d hoped.

He elbowed me in the ribs and refilled my glass.

“C’mon along, my Clever Clogs. I can’t do it without you.”

I felt I’d perfected my absolute blank face when I opened a new tab and created his logon credentials. I let myself mirror his beautiful grin when we had added a photo to his profile page and made the required connection with Lyn. He beamed at me when she initiated a Chat stream with him and shared new photos of her baby boy. I so badly wanted to press my lips to his cheek before I left, but, well, we all know how well that would go.

I made it back home relatively sober and aching for his warmth and his smile. Oh God, how could I ever survive without him? I forced myself to tidy up and put my laundry on and take a shower. Only then did I let myself go, pushing as many fingers as I could take up inside of me. I came sobbing his name to the empty walls of my shower stall and it was several long minutes before my legs had the strength to carry me to my bed.

I’m the happiest man in the world.


	4. Ashes in my mouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When I look back upon my life  
> It's always with a sense of shame  
> I've always been the one to blame  
> For everything I long to do  
> No matter when or where or who  
> Has one thing in common to  
> It’s a sin.
> 
> Pet Shop Boys

It was only ever a matter of time before it would all turn to dust in my hands. 

A new case at the foot of a desecrated altar one bright autumn morning brought everything I had tried so painstakingly to bury in my past long ago into the cold light of day.

I was slowly and mortifyingly laid bare before Lewis: my childish mistakes; my religious bigotry; the spear I had thrust into my once-best-friend’s heart, not once, but twice; and worst of all, my inability to tell the truth even to my boss, the man I respected more than all others.

Everything I hated about me: my cowardice, my latent homophobia and self-hatred, my hypocrisy – I could no longer hide any of it under words of cleverness. Instead, every ugly part of my previous life was suddenly relevant for forensic examination by Lewis; and worse still he shouted at me and told me to get out of his sight. I deserved no better: I had behaved worse than a child; raging that he didn’t understand. No wonder he wanted nothing to do with me. There was nothing good about me, no redeemable qualities worth preserving. While I was neither the cause nor the catalyst for the death of poor Will, I was not innocent. Any kindness from me in days gone by might have prevented his death and thereby the deaths of all the others. Instead, I remained my stupid, ignorant self until it was all too late.

Lewis’s rejection drove me staggering straight into the arms of the person who wanted me dead. When I realised that Zoë had drugged me and I was about to die, I will admit that part of me did not want to struggle to stay breathing. Part of me just wanted to surrender to sleep. It had all been for nothing after all. The one person I loved in life thought I was despicable, and I couldn’t blame him. My sins may have been in the past, but their effect had not been erased by time. You understand, of course, I loved him because he is such a good person, kind and intelligent: the sort of man who would never dream of mocking his best friend for daring to admit he was gay; the sort of man who was too careful in his thinking to be misled by the antiquated ignorance of dogma and doctrine. Had Lewis been there in my stead, Will would have found acceptance and friendship the day he came out. Instead, Will got nervous laughter from a teen who was afraid to admit his own preferences even to himself.

I came to on the cold cement outside, Lewis covering me with his body as the gas mains exploded and sent Zoë’s building up in an inferno. When I woke again he was watching over me in a hospital ward.

“You saved me,” I breathed, hardly able to believe this fortune and willing him to recognise my love in those words.

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” he said, and turned and walked away.

My eyes filled with tears when I was left alone. All my stupid fantasies had been obliterated with four words. I’d never had any reason to expect more, of course. Lewis had never even known my most private thoughts (oh, thank God). But it still hurt worse than a knife wound to see him walk away without even a backwards glance. The smoke inhalation was nothing in comparison.

I resolved the following things:

One) my fantasies about Robert Lewis were to be curtailed  
Two) more than ever, Lewis could not be allowed to discover my true feelings  
Three) assuming he still wanted to work with me, I had to find a way to make this up to him.

I had disappointed him badly, and I could not allow that to happen again.

The next time I woke Lewis returned, this time with my headphones and my tablet so I would have something to entertain myself while I was confined.

“So, tell me about this Youtube. How does it work then?” he asked. He sat on my bed and leaned up against me while I showed him about accounts and subscriptions and instructed him solemnly: “On no account are you to read the comments, sir.” His scent was like a balm to my smoke-burned senses, but for once I did not allow myself to stare at his mouth or contemplate touching it.

He gave me an amused side-glance and flicked through to the Suggestions tab.

When I was allowed to go home I tried my best not to touch myself and think of Robbie. I prayed to God and his mother Mary about it, because there is nothing more off-putting than the thought that the creator of the universe and his mother might be watching you. 

I lasted four days before I couldn’t bear it any more, if I was damned then so be it.


	5. The sunless seas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I forgot the first commandment  
> Of the realist’s handbook:  
> Don’t be fooled by illusions  
> You created yourself 
> 
> (Sting: I love her, but she loves someone else)

In spite of my earlier resolve, I disappointed him again, of course. 

For a while things had gone smoothly. I’d done my best to be the model sergeant for Lewis, working industriously, putting in long hours so that I could thoroughly prepare or investigate any resources he might need. Apart from one bump in the road when my due diligence yielded the man who’d killed Mrs Lewis – and oh God, that was bad – Lewis was frustrated enough at me to yell at me again, but apart from that things had gone well. We’d closed cases, Innocent seemed to have relaxed her vigilance and Robbie and I had settled back into our comfortable working partnership that included drinks after work and fulfilling our allotted roles in banter: myself with the facetious comments, himself with the rolled eyebrows and sarcasm.

Me: Now I know what it feels like to be Britney Spears. 

Him: Will it stop you dressing like her on your days off?

Me: Probably not. That’s another thing I shall need counselling for.

It was almost like old times.

Him: You know what I’m doing? I’m going to think like Morse.

Me: Does that mean we are going to the pub?

Laura Hobson was beginning to join us in our pub sessions from time to time. The good doctor is always fun to have around as she is willing to join me in the task of teasing Lewis over a pint, and because she is a friend rather than a subordinate, unlike me she does not have to watch her choice of words for fear of innuendo trespassing over the line of what I can and can’t reasonably expect to get away with. I sometimes noticed her observing me over the rim of her drink. That sent a chill down my spine: she was far too shrewd and observant for me to mislead easily. On no account could she be allowed to discern my true feelings for Lewis, so I contrived to play the impeccably courteous but plucky young sergeant in her presence. I’m not sure I fooled her for a minute.

And then I let Lewis down again.

I don’t date, and I don’t, as a rule, feel there is something missing from my life because of that. But when I ran into Scarlett Mortmaigne, my old childhood sweetheart, suddenly something about my permanent solitude hurt and I was thrown off-balance and came dangerously close to being swept back into the poisonous machinations of her family at Crevecoeur Hall. 

Again I compromised a case and my integrity by letting my stupid emotions get in the way of my judgement. Lewis did the only sensible thing and threw me off the case. In the end he forgave me as he’d done once before and told me silly jokes until I had cracked a weak smile. It had hurt realising that my once-upon-a-time bride had calculatingly used me as a mere convenience. It hurt worse to realise that again Lewis had been witness to my worst parts: my loneliness, my vulnerabilities, my contemptible ability to lie to his face. I was so ashamed, and it seemed there was nothing I could do about it. There it was: I was a deeply flawed human being, and the one man I wanted to think well of me had seen me exposed in all the worst ways. The fantasy that lived in my head had never seemed more improbable.

Evidently Lewis thought that I needed looking after too, after that whole sorry episode - although in his book that tended to come in the form of unhelpful bits of advice dispensed at random intervals. It was as painful to be on the receiving end of his prescriptions as you’d expect.

“Honestly man, give yourself a break now and then.”

“Yes, mum.” Roll eyes, bob head, take a drag on my cigarette.

Then it got worse.

“I’m going to say it just this once: for your sake, you need a partner, James. You need someone in your life.”

It was as if he’d just surgically removed my lungs.

It’s one thing to know intellectually that your secret dreams are as impossible as a they are insubstantial. It’s quite another when the object of your love casually confirms that you are no more and no less to them than a problem-child that needs fixing, deserving of a few kind words of encouragement now and then.

He left me sitting on a bench outside a pub while he went off to check up on how Mrs Marber was doing because that’s the sort of man Robbie Lewis is: kind. I couldn’t have walked if I’d tried. I just sat there for an hour while my beer got warm and the day grew cold.

That weekend Lewis brought an iPod over to my flat and said that ever since the case of the Czech barmaid he’d been mildly curious about the books of the Inklings, but he thought he’d rather listen to them than read them. I downloaded the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, (“No relation,” quipped Robbie with a grin); as well as _Out Of The Silent Planet_ , just in case he had a hankering for weirdly archaic science fiction laden with unsubtle dollops of Christian Apologetics. I added Tolkien’s _The Hobbit_ and _The Lord Of The Rings_ , as well as Tom Shippey’s _The Road to Middle-Earth_ , because, to be frank, I’d found Shippey infinitely more interesting than Tolkien. I told him we’d save Charles Williams for another day as he was a bit of an acquired taste.

I had to drive my nails into my left palm to stop my eyes from pricking with tears when he handed me a beer and sat down next to me on the couch. I needed to do something to keep him sitting there where I could breathe his familiar scent. So I spent the next three hours talking about the theory of the Traumatised Author, the influences of linguistic studies and Classical Literature and role of food in books by writers who had lived through the deprivations after World War II.

He sat there nodding and smiling as if he were interested in what I had to say.


	6. Friday I'm In Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't care if Monday's blue  
> Tuesday's grey and Wednesday too  
> Thursday I don't care about you  
> It's Friday I'm in love
> 
> The Cure - Friday I'm In Love

Robert Lewis was determined to see me into my grave.

I was on a miserable ‘sabbatical’ (read: unpaid labour) in Kosovo when he hijacked me for a case and brought me home prematurely. He told via text message to come straight to the pub as soon as I arrived back in Oxford; and I was looking forward to a quiet pint and an evening of banter consisting mostly of mock-gratitude to him for replacing my holiday with case work.

What I got was a face-full of Robbie and Laura snogging and giggling like teenagers, unable to keep their hands off each other, not even in front of Jean Innocent. I plastered a smile on my face and offered them my sincerest congratulations.

I’d expected this day. I’d even encouraged it. I wanted him to be happy and I thought there was no finer person to be his partner than Dr Hobson. It didn’t make it hurt any less, of course. I put my left hand surreptitiously into my pocket and forced my nails into my palm so hard that I could feel the skin tearing on my hand. That enabled me to keep grinning at them and joking and raising my glass to salute them. You turn your back for five minutes, etc.

I got home that night more than a little drunk and reeling with stupification at this new circumstance. The last time Lewis had shocked me like this was a couple of years before, when he’d first started talking about retiring. It had panicked me and made me realise that I didn’t want to be a policeman without him, and it marked the first of my opaque and impenetrable attempts to tell him what he meant to me. (If you go, I go. Who else would understand me?) He’d chuckled and painted his vision of our imaginary shared future for me: “Much as I’d like for us to have an allotment and a nice little sailing dinghy together...” I’d heard of worse plans and told him so. He just laughed and the conversation moved on to other things.

Now a couple of years on, I realised that I no longer wanted to be a policeman at all. We had been through a depressing case and a young lad had died, and I’d felt guilty that on his last day alive I had pressured him into admitting things he didn’t want to talk about. It had been his last few hours on earth, and I had made them worse rather than better. I made up my mind: I wanted to resign. Lewis was on the brink of imminent retirement and a life of domestic bliss with Laura Hobson anyway, and so I wasn’t going to see very much of him any more after this. There seemed to be no reason to continue.

“I don’t like what I’ve become,” I said to him. “I used to think that people were basically good. Now I don’t, and I don’t know when that changed.”

Lewis was startled by my confession, I could tell.

“We can still meet up for the odd pint...two ex-coppers?” he said.

“Course.” I wanted to cry. Instead I said, “I hope you don’t feel it’s been a waste, training me up; because I’ve appreciated it.”

“It wasn’t a waste. It was a pleasure.”

It was two months later, while I was working out my notice and making tentative plans about what I was going to do next, when there was a knock at my door one Friday evening. Robbie was there with a laptop under one arm and a six-pack of ale in the other. I ushered him in, surprised but delighted at his unexpected appearance.

“Sir – Robbie, I mean. Why, um?” I waved at my couch and went to get a bottle opener for the drinks.

He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then he sighed and said, “Laura and I decide to call it off a few weeks ago. We only really lasted about ten days. We fit together better as friends.” Then he grimaced, sat down and looked a little lost.

“I’m sorry,” I said nervously, not sure at all what to say under the circumstances. I really was sorry. I like Laura a lot and I really had wanted them to be happy.

“Ah, don’t be,” he said. “We’re not. Better now than in a year’s time.”

“I s’pose,” I said, wincing at my apparent inability to say anything other than spouting clichés. “What have you got here then?” I gestured at what appeared to be a new laptop.

“Oh,” he brightened visibly, “well, the old one was long past its heyday and was as slow as a pig swimming in a trough of treacle, so I decided to get a decent one, you know, more RAM, more powerful CPU, faster motherboard. Even has a solid-state hard-drive.”

I goggled at him and eyed the new sleek apparatus sitting on my coffee table. It was the sort of thing that booted in under ten seconds and apparently was powerful enough to control the workings of a nuclear launch centre.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I wanted to try out this Spotify thing my daughter’s always going on about.” He looked at me hopefully and gestured to the screen.

I sat down beside him and opened up a new tab and typed “Spotify” into the search engine. There was something off about this whole thing. Lewis shifted uncomfortably next to me.

“Wait a minute,” I said, my brain overclocking itself and finally coming up with a tentative result. “A man who casually rattles off words like motherboard and solid-state is a man who can probably set up his own Spotify.”

Lewis froze next to me.

I turned to look at him. He looked back at me, guilty as sin.

“I – um” he said, going pink about the cheeks.

“I never had you pegged as a duplicitous master-schemer of artifice and dissimulation,” I said, my mind racing and hope suddenly beating a tattoo in my chest.

He gave me a sheepish grin and said, “Um.”

Once again I found myself noticing his mouth and wondering what it would be like to touch it. He was watching me intently and it seemed to me that he was leaning in towards me, I could feel his body heat radiating off him. I hesitantly raised my hand and shakily reached out and traced his lower lip. His mouth parted and then one of us, and I can never quite decide who, brought our heads together and I kissed him.

A second seemed to pass, and then he kissed me back, his tongue probing for entrance and then he consumed my mouth greedily. It was glorious.

Apparently I’d made two mistakes about Robbie Lewis:

Mistake One) He didn’t fancy men.  
Mistake Two) He didn’t fancy me.

Three mistakes:

Mistake Three) I thought he was a shy and vanilla sort of a man who didn’t take charge in the bedroom. After all, he was the person who had added the word ‘rumpy-pumpy’ to my vocabulary all those years ago. How was I to know any better?

As I’ve pointed out before, I have an unfortunate face and a thicko brain, which is why I had managed to miss out three vital pieces of information about the person I had loved for the best part of a decade. It’s probably also why I was naked on my sofa before I fully realised that this was real and Robbie was edging me closer and closer to the most unexpected orgasm of my life. I gasped and struggled to sit up. Instantly the fingers and hot, wet mouth disappeared and Robbie’s flushed face reappeared in view.

“Are you alright, love?” he said anxiously.

I nodded vigorously, unable to form words momentarily. He called me ‘love’. I hoped he could read all the joy in my expression as I clutched at his hand.

“I was just going to say that it’s probably a lot more comfortable on my bed. Also, you seem to be overdressed.”

He snickered at me and pulled me up off the couch and into my bedroom. I made short work of his clothes.

I woke in the morning aching in all the right places and smiling so hard my face hurt. Robbie had woken before me and was watching me fondly with those beautiful blue eyes of his.

“Morning, pet,” he said before kissing me on my forehead and then on my lips.

“Mmpf,” I said as eloquently as I could.

“Just to be clear,” he continued, “I don’t do one night stands.”

My foolish heart jumped into my throat at that, and I struggled to put together words that might form a coherent sentence.

“D’you think we could maybe get that allotment together after all, then?” I asked.

He gave me a delighted grin and kissed me again.

Life is good. Clearly, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but as Lewis pointed out a long time ago, he’s the brains of this operation. 

But today I’m the luckiest man in the world and I can’t stop smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, um.
> 
> 1\. This ended up being _way_ more angsty than 5:1 stories are supposed to be, probably for reasons of Hathaway.  
> 2\. All credit for this story goes to the beautiful people on the Endeavour Morse Discord who prompted this story


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